How to Stand Out on LinkedIn as a Freelancer: 9 Ways to Elevate Your LinkedIn Personal Brand

How do you stand out on LinkedIn? This is the question freelancers all over the world are asking. Gaining visibility on a professional network as vast and competitive as LinkedIn isn’t easy, but it can be done – with the right strategies. 

One of the best strategies is to elevate your personal brand so that it stands out and is nothing short of irresistible. But how do you go about boosting your LinkedIn personal branding? Our comprehensive guide will provide you with nine tips to make you shine on LinkedIn. 

A big corporate entity uses branding because it’s a great way to sum up everything it wants people to know about its products or services – take world-famous companies such as Google, Nike, and Netflix.

Their names alone evoke specific images: the logo, the colors, the tone of voice, and even a particular jingle or ad that has stuck with you for years. All this belongs to branding. 

Personal branding is quite similar. You won’t always have the time to tell potential employers all about yourself in a comprehensive, list-style approach. 

You need to encapsulate your strongest selling points in an easy-to-assimilate representation of yourself: your LinkedIn personal branding.

To begin with, you’ll want to think about what you’ve accomplished up until this point. Develop a short, catchy, and original way to describe your background. Then, get a trusted professional from your network to review it and suggest where things could tighten up.

Visuals and photos infuse your personal branding with a further sense of connection and belonging. Ask yourself specific questions: What’s your brand all about? Are you a results-driven project manager? Or are you a skilled graphic designer? What are your strongest selling points?

Whatever it is, you need imagery that tells some of your story. Make sure that some background images and other illustrations portray what you’re doing best, whether in the boardroom, at the drawing board, or at a networking event. 

With artificial intelligence making inroads into design and visuals, you don’t even need to have a creative flair!

Next, you need a nice, snappy list of your essential skills. For example, imagine you are a freelance financial advisor writing their skill list on their LinkedIn profile. To turn your profile into a unique and memorable one, you can’t simply list your accreditations in tax-related matters, but be specific.

Consider including your competencies with specific industry-standard tools, such as tax software and cash flow analysis tools. All this will help you build a more solid business profile that makes you stand out.

In parallel, you’ll need to research and figure out the following: Who is your target audience? What are their pain points? What are they looking for to address (and solve) them? Whatever it is, mention it.

Your profile’s Featured section is the perfect place to go into more detail. Think about what your best work has been so far. For example, if you are a freelance graphic designer who’s recently completed an outstanding project using one of the best graphic design tools around, showcasing it in your Featured section will serve a dual purpose.

On the one hand, it will wow your audience by demonstrating your creative flair and visionary attitude towards graphic design. On the other hand, it will also convey your expertise in leveraging the tools of your trade.

You should also enrich your Featured section through another critical element: social proof. Don’t simply include your favorite pieces of work – let your happy customers do the talking for you.

If you find material demonstrating your knowledge of your specialist subject, share it. 

Even if you didn’t write it, associating yourself with thoughtful advice is a neat trick. Similarly, demonstrating that you can curate top-notch content from industry leaders and reputable sources speaks volumes about your knowledge and dedication.

Let’s say, for instance, that you are a freelancer marketer focusing on sustainability in the beauty and wellness industry. Regularly sharing updates from sustainability industry experts and research and case studies from sustainability tech platforms could help boost your LinkedIn profile.

Hashtags are a great way to fit a lot of information into a few words and can help you get noticed. So, use them wherever you can – without, of course, stuffing your content with them. Sometimes, incorporating just a couple of trending hashtags can work wonders. 

See the LinkedIn post below for the less-is-more approach in action:

When connection requests come in, think about what and who you want to link up with. Be strategic in who you’re networking with, and build your community intentionally.

Keep your achievements current. Nothing fails to impress more than a dusty old list of accomplishments from another era. So, as you get the triumphs under your belt, shout about them – potential clients may be watching.

Think about topic-focused online groups. These are spaces for people passionate about particular interests, making them lively places full of possibilities.

The good thing about connections is that one often leads to another. In other words, the more connections you make, the more opportunities will arise. It can be exhilarating to see where joining up can take you.

Groups can also be beneficial for freelancers. Join the right ones, and you can sell your services to people most likely to want them. You’ll also be in an excellent place to hear all the latest industry news and learn the latest developments in various pertinent areas.

On the topic of staying informed, keep an eye on your newsfeed, too. The better informed you are, the more relevant your brand will be.

Once you’ve connected with like-minded individuals, delve deeper into their skills, passions, and interests. 

Suppose you’re a freelance fusion chef who spotted a wedding planner in your party and event group. This could represent a great business opportunity to introduce yourself, showcase your unique cooking expertise, and discuss a potential partnership.

Building authentic and personable relationships within the corporate world isn’t always easy. Sure, there are some vibrant B corps out there, but some mainstream bodies (when not in imaginative mode) can, at times, strain the attention.

What you have going for you is individuality, so use it to your advantage.

For example, run your eye over your LinkedIn connections and see who might be a good prospect, then reach out. To streamline this process, consider using LinkedIn automation software to help identify and connect with potential prospects efficiently.  Make your approach friendly, personalized, and, above all, valuable.

The oldest marketing approach in the book is to describe a common problem and then show how a product or service solves it. It’s basic, but it tends to work. So, consider how you can frame what you offer in this light. 

What problem are you solving? What transpires as a result of working with you? When done right, this approach works because it makes you seem like the obvious move.

For example, writing case studies and success stories can be hugely helpful in positioning you as a hands-on professional who delivers real, tangible results. You can store your content in a safe repository through a content management system and pull out what you need when you need it.

LinkedIn allows you to be hyper-specific with your content ideas. You know something about your potential customers from their LinkedIn presence. Think about the particular problems they are likely to face. How would you suggest that you solve them?

For example, let’s imagine that you’re a freelance accountant. You might notice that a company you follow on LinkedIn is expanding its operations by working with new suppliers. Alongside recent economic activity, there is often a quantity of extra invoicing, which presents an opportunity.

At that point, you introduce yourself to the company’s hiring manager, highlighting your top-notch accounting skills and expertise in invoice software tools. The chances are that your profile will be of interest to them, perhaps enabling you to begin a new career with the company. 

LinkedIn allows you to keep in touch with prospective employers and follow them through various developments. If things didn’t work out last time for whatever reason, don’t dismiss the relationship. Again, if you notice that they’re expanding, try approaching them. It might simply be that they weren’t financially able to work with you before.

Don’t forget to do an old-fashioned trawl for jobs on LinkedIn, too. You can set up an alert so that brand-new prospects never go unnoticed.

When you come to an arrangement with an employer, be clear on what you’re undertaking and ensure you have a timetable and budget attached.

For most freelancers, it’s a bit of a juggling operation, so be careful not to over-commit. If in doubt, under-promise and over-deliver. 

LinkedIn personal branding can deliver the goods because of the potential that exists for you to reach a much wider audience. It’s a compelling platform, and it makes no sense to miss out on the meaningful connections it can provide. 

The professional audience contained within is bursting with people just waiting to make a real connection with you. All you have to do is make yourself visible and attractive, and that’s what developing a personal brand on LinkedIn is for.